


meet me at the reservoir

by penrosequartz



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Asthma, Digital Art, Emotional Manipulation, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Inspired by Music, M/M, Sexual Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-10-01 23:29:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20436173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penrosequartz/pseuds/penrosequartz
Summary: Mick Davies thought he had lost all hope before Arthur Ketch came into his life. Now he’s a few months in, and he’s beginning to realise he’s got even less hope than he had before. His parents are gone, his sister is distant, Arthur’s ex is too close for comfort, and love isn’t anything like he imagined.





	1. i guess you live and you learn

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all! this fic was written for the ace supernatural mini bang, found [here on tumblr](https://acespnminibang.tumblr.com/)! the art is by the brilliant blindswandive ([ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindSwandive) / [tumblr](https://blindswandive.tumblr.com/)), and i can't thank her enough for the incredible work she's done!  
it's been a long time since i started working on this, and the idea of releasing it into the world is pretty terrifying. this fic is my baby. please be gentle.  
also, BIG disclaimer: this fic is in NO way supposed to represent meaningful, healthy relationships. mick is being abused. this is not intended to be romantic or appropriate. if you or anyone you know is in a relationship like this, please leave as soon as you can - these are not good vibes!!!!  
[the main piece of art for this fic is found in chapter 3] // this fic is based off [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6UaplvdnWM)  
this is also my 50th work on ao3! go me!!  
there's also a playlist for this fic [here!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2bUK3G4NY36oDb6bcSn0K2?si=8p7A04UzQbaM5i4uJhLjpw)

* * *

_i guess you get what you deserve..._

* * *

There’s a path to the top of the mountain, and it feels like he walks forever, but he makes it. He always does.

The sunset lights the tops of the trees on fire, pink and gold glinting in the afternoon - it’s beautiful, and it’s probably breathtaking, but Mick Davies has seen it all before, and he’s sure he’ll see it all again before winter ends. He pulls his coat tighter around him, because even with the sun still up, it’s freezing. London was cold, but never like this - London’s cold was muddy,_ weak, _ compared to such a knife-edge of a winter.

He has to get down the other side, down to the shore of the reservoir, before the light’s completely gone. He doesn’t want to get lost. He shouldn’t want to get lost.

Someone’s managed to get a fire going on the skinny, grey, makeshift beach, stretched out like a paint streak against the edge of the water, and when Mick finally sits down beside it, asking himself why the hell he’s out in the cold, he hears a voice drift towards him.

“You know,” Arthur’s silly, upper-class accent sounds even more ridiculous given their location, “I don’t know why you do that. I have a perfectly nice car, which you know you’re free to sit in, given the absence of your own.”

Mick winces at that, and Arthur almost looks remorseful for a moment. 

“I like the walk,” Mick says quietly, turning back to stare at the fire. Months ago, he could have stared at Arthur for hours without interruption. Now, he has a tendency to look away.

There are a few people sitting around the beach, most orbiting the fire and chattering away like birds - starlings, Mick remembers, were everywhere in London. Starlings and pigeons. Some of America’s birds are nice, but these days, Mick finds himself missing Britain more and more.

He looks out across the water. It’s hard to imagine that it’s only been months since he’d swum in there, summer heat making his t-shirt cling to his skin, only months since Arthur first… propositioned him. The weather is cold, unnaturally still, now. It lacks the buzz of summer and the storms of autumn - fall, Mick reminds himself. There’s no wind, sitting by the fire with Arthur and a handful of strangers; there’s nothing, and it feels like if he were to dive into the water, he might just float on in a continuous void.

Arthur wraps an arm around him, and Mick leans into it, almost unwillingly. A continuous void sounds pretty nice right about now. He closes his eyes.

* * *

Months ago, Mick was out of luck and out of money. His life was falling apart. He’d killed both his parents in a car crash and then he had no parents and no car, and nothing good in life except one tiny slip of paper.

One letter that came in the mail, that told him he’d gotten into university.

And then Arthur came along, and that piece of paper didn’t matter anymore - anything Arthur said would keep them apart, Mick tore apart. Nothing was more important than having somebody to love him, and he’d finally found someone who did.

The only other person in Mick’s life was his older sister, and she mostly kept to herself.

* * *

What Mick misses most about London - about being a kid, really, is the fact that he had friends. There’s a whole group of people he loved and smiled at and shared sandwiches with and told bad jokes to. He misses London’s taxis and foggy anger and _ tea. _ Christ, he misses good British tea. 

He misses his parents. He hears the brakes screaming every night. What he doesn’t hear is his sister’s voice, not anymore, and he knows she blames him. At least she actually got to _ go _ to university.

He shouldn’t be bitter about that, because it doesn’t make sense - he has Arthur now, his partner, something he’s never had before, and she told him Arthur would be good for him, and then she left. Arthur is more important. Arthur is the only thing that’s important, because Mick loves him, and that’s how it goes.

Wow, his head really hurts.

Mick opens his eyes slowly, painfully, and looks around. The room is bright with untamed sunlight, his memory is vague, but it’s not blank. He almost wishes it was. Even though he wakes up some mornings feeling like he’s been bashed over the head with an electric guitar, he likes it. He’s supposed to.

And even if he doesn’t, he’ll learn to - because the simple fact is he’s not doing it right. Everybody says sex is brilliant, but… if he’s being honest, Mick is finding it at best underwhelming and at worst painful, in more ways than one. He has to learn to like it, or he has to bare his teeth and get through it, because Arthur deserves better. It’s wrong of him to withhold something like this just because he’s _ bad _at it.

He makes himself a coffee in his tiny kitchen and reads the note Arthur left on the table.

_ You need eggs. Reservoir at eight? - A _

Not for the first time, Mick wonders whether this relationship means the same thing to Arthur as it does to him. But it must, surely - Arthur says he loves him, and Mick loves Arthur back. It’s not that complicated.

Mick tells himself to stop reading into things and butters some toast, then gets ready for work. Life isn’t that bad. It could be a whole lot worse.

* * *

Life _ gets _ a whole lot worse when Toni comes into Walmart and just kind of… stares at him every time she walks past. It makes Mick feel examined, like he’s under a microscope, and when she finally checks out at the register beside him he tries to look as busy as possible, even though there aren’t many people in the store. Her eyes are terrifyingly piercing.

When he clocks off, he walks straight home. He doesn’t look at his phone, doesn’t call Arthur, doesn’t eat dinner. He just sits and stares at the Chernobyl documentary on the TV, and tries not to think about Toni, Arthur’s ex, or his sister, Elizabeth, or his future, pointless, or his rent, still unpaid.


	2. outta touch, outta lovin'

_ the engine’s runnin’ and i’m wasted at the reservoir _

* * *

Mick’s starting to think he needs to make some friends.

He’s considering the possibility that maybe the reason he clings to Arthur so tightly is because he doesn’t have anyone else to latch on to. He can’t just sever his tether to Ketch, of course, but he doesn’t want to seem clingy.

In any case, Arthur glares whenever Mick talks to other people around the reservoir fire, so maybe it’d be best if he just kept going on his own. Friends would be an irritating obligation, anyway. If Mick wants someone to talk to, he can talk to Arthur. If he wants a hug, Arthur will hug him.

Even if that usually leads to something else.

He’s so tired. He’s so sick of working 9-5, doing the same thing every day, he’s had it with feeling like crap, but he can’t fix it because he _ can’t find what’s wrong. _

Arthur’s probably going to brush off his encounter with Toni, because she’s allowed to buy food, isn’t she? She may be a bitch, but she doesn’t deserve to starve. He’d be right, of course, but Mick can’t shake the petrified feeling that one day he’ll wake up and she’ll be standing over the bed with a hammer.

Maybe he’s just paranoid, and maybe he should talk to somebody about that, but Arthur would absolutely judge him for it. He doesn’t want to seem weak.

There’s a lot of things he doesn’t want to be.

It’s only eight-thirty, and Mick’s already feeling like a deadweight, and-

Oh, _ shit. _

_ Reservoir at eight? _

The words swirl around in his brain. Is Arthur expecting him to be there? Has he called? Is his phone on silent, or something?

He checks. It’s not. No missed calls, no texts.

Well, it must be fine, then. It was a question, after all. “Would you like to come to the reservoir at eight?” not “meet me at the reservoir.”

Mick spends a few more seconds in relative peace before another thought creeps in.

What if Arthur’s in danger? What if that’s why he hasn’t called? What if he’s drunk, or high, or lying in the water facedown? What if he’s lost? What if he crashed his car? What if his phone died AND he got lost AND he crashed his car?

Eventually Mick gives up on anxious speculation and calls Arthur instead.

He doesn’t pick up.

He calls him again.

And he calls him again.

Mick only has a $20 bill in his wallet, so he prays that the taxi won’t cost any more than that, otherwise he’ll have to give the cabbie his watch. Hold on, they don’t call them cabbies in America, do they? Wait... do they?

Mick is still trying to remember if Americans call them cabbies when he’s pulling up to the parking lot a couple of minutes away from the reservoir. The fee is $18. Abruptly, what Mick _ does _ remember is that Americans tip.

“Keep the change,” Mick sighs grimly, heaving himself out of the cab.

* * *

Arthur seems… _ bored, _almost, staring into the fire as Toni inches closer towards him, and it makes Mick’s stomach lurch to think that maybe, just maybe, Arthur’s phone hasn’t died at all. Maybe the only person left on the planet who actually cares has given up on him, too.

“Arthur?”

“Oh,” Arthur drawls, looking up, _ “Michael.” _

He’s drunk - Mick doesn’t like the way he says his name when he’s drunk.

“Why didn’t you call?” Mick raises his phone, his eyebrow.

“Why didn’t you come?” Arthur replies harshly.

“I was tired,” Mick says. What he doesn’t say is that he still is, and that he’s especially tired of seeing Toni getting nearer and nearer to draping herself across her ex, who just so happens to be _ his _ boyfriend.

“Then why aren’t you asleep?” Arthur takes another swig of his beer. Is it beer? Who knows. Could be rubbing alcohol, with the way he’s acting. No, Mick, don’t think that. You shouldn’t think that about your boyfriend. He loves you.

“I was worried,” Mick tucks his phone into his jacket pocket, and folds his arms.

“You were worried about me?” Arthur frowns, and suddenly there’s something hurt in his tone, “Mick, _ I _ was worried about _ you! _ I thought you didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be with me… I was scared, and I didn’t want to be too pushy, that’s why I didn’t call!”

Mick feels guilt twisting in his stomach. Maybe… maybe it is his fault, maybe he should have just shown up instead of being all… accusatory.

“Why didn’t you pick up when I called?” Mick asks, making his way towards Arthur, shooting a glare Toni’s way.

“You called?” Arthur seems surprised, “Oh, I’m sorry, I must have left my phone on silent.”

Mick sits down uncomfortably - it really is his fault, isn’t it? If he wasn’t so insecure all the time then maybe Arthur would know that Mick loves him.

“You do still want to do this, us, don’t you, Michael?” Arthur asks, his expression mousey and timid. There’s something in his eyes Mick can’t quite place.

“Of course,” Mick replies, because Arthur is the only one who would be this for him, and probably the only one who ever will. 

“Then prove it,” Arthur says, voice harder, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

* * *

First, Mick gets really bloody smashed. His skull feels like it’s vibrating, there’s a sharp pain behind his eyes, and he’s got some weird tune from a Tesco (?) advert stuck in his head. He can’t imagine how long it’s been since he actually_ saw _a Tesco advert, but that, he supposes, is the nature of the human mind.

He wants, more than anything, a hug - from somebody, anybody. He just wants to feel warm instead of empty and disgusting and rotting on the inside, being eaten away by some unknown parasite. No, he wants a hug from his sister, specifically, because he misses her and he’s worried about her and he wants her to call him and tell him that she misses him, too, and-

“You ready to go?” Comes Arthur’s voice, thick and heavy in the twilight cold.

Mick nods, lets himself be lead back to Arthur’s car - parked, he notices, down the opposite end to where the taxi dropped him off. That’s why he didn’t see it, didn’t even think to look. He lets the thought drift through his brain, too distracted by the sloshing of vodka and beer in his stomach to pay it much notice.

He wants this. He wants to do this with Arthur. He wants to have sex, because everybody wants that. Guys his age are grabbing whatever they can get. He wants to have sex because he wants to be close to someone, and sex brings people closer, doesn’t it? He wants to do this because it’s what normal people do, and he and Arthur have a normal relationship, just like everybody else. He wants to do this, even if he can only stand the thought of it when he’s hammered.

He wants it, but sometimes he gets the impression that even if he didn’t, he’d get it anyway.

Arthur scares him, just occasionally, Mick thinks as Arthur drives them back to Mick’s flat. Just sometimes. It’s Mick’s own fault if he’s afraid of his boyfriend, though, obviously - Arthur’s not a terrifying person, Mick’s just projecting his issues onto him, or something. That thought makes him feel even more guilty.

Maybe his parents made him like this, or maybe the unbridged chasm between him and his sister - that’s what Mick thinks when he winces at the feeling of Arthur’s hands on his skin. Maybe it’s a punishment from God, to make him hate what everybody else seems to love. What did he do to deserve it?

But when Arthur is deep asleep by his side, and Mick is staring at the ceiling, feeling something writhing and curling inside him, he realises this parasite sitting in his stomach is down to him. Nobody else to blame but himself. There’s nobody there, not his parents, or his sister, or the distance from Britain to North Dakota, not the cosmos, not fate, and not God.

Completely, utterly, entirely alone.


	3. it isn't apathy

* * *

_ i just don’t care if i die _

* * *

Life continues to repeat endlessly outwards, unfurling like a carpet without an edge, being unrolled across a floor without a colour, and Mick feels worse.

How is it possible, if he goes through the same routine each day, to feel more and more awful, when he’s only repeating his actions? He guesses it’s like Groundhog Day. Bill Murray, in that movie, he had to feel worse before he could feel better, right? Mick is holding out to feel better, but maybe that day will never come.

Maybe something is wrong with him, something more than what he thought before. He doesn’t care about anything anymore. His sister called. She seems upset. He doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s just... blank.

Every time he closes his eyes, he feels the roll of the car, hears the screams of his mother, feels the discomfort of Arthur’s skin against his, he feels all of these things that should make him want to scream, and simultaneously, he doesn’t feel anything at all.

He just stares at the clock ticking over on his monitor at Walmart, and hopes the time passes faster.

He starts spending more money on alcohol. Who needs a college fund if you’re never going to college? The one thing he can grab onto, the one thing he can feel, is his need for Arthur - for Arthur to like him, for Arthur to want him, for Arthur to talk to him, for Arthur to touch him, for Arthur to need him back.

He almost feels like he’s drowning in a sea of nothingness, reaching for Arthur’s silhouette just above the surface, a substance something like alcohol, perhaps gasoline, drenching him, filling up his throat, waiting for something to set it all alight.

Without warning, there’s a spark.

It’s been a long day, but they’re all long, and it’s been boring, but that’s what they tend to be. Elizabeth said she would call him after he got off work, and she’d seemed so distant. Or maybe that was him? Distance; a measurement of how much space is between two points - so they’re both the same distance from each other, he supposes.

Winter is starting to melt away now, warming the earth beneath his feet, warming the water of the reservoir. Some of the regulars around the fire have dared to swim, and Mick could tell you their names, but not what they look like. Arthur seems to know them well. Are they his friends? Mick doesn’t have time for friends. How could Arthur?

Nobody is swimming at the moment. Mick’s throat feels strange, feels the way it does when his walk over the mountain is too long and too hard. He might be a little tipsy, so maybe that’s the cause.

And Arthur is staring at Toni.

Sure, he’s making conversation with a group of guys, talking about some politician or some sports match or some other irrelevant thing. But he’s _ looking _at Toni.

Mick wants to tear him away. Wants to grab him and shake him and yell “Don’t you even fucking think about it!”

But he can’t. He can’t interrupt Arthur. He can’t make a scene. He can’t- he can’t-

Out of all the thoughts swirling in his brain, one fights its way to the surface:

He’s going to go swimming.

* * *

High octane.

He learned about octane in chemistry, an extra carbon, an extra oxygen, an extra hydrogen - that could kill you, you know, one atom bonded in the wrong place.

Mick thinks maybe he bonded in the wrong place.

College seems so far away, now. Elizabeth, too. Even Arthur, Mick thinks, as he wades out into the cool water, seems like he’s drifting further and further.

Something else he learned in school: no matter how fast humans travel in their little spaceships, the universe is expanding faster, and the planets in other galaxies are slipping away.

If he leaves for college now, he’ll never catch up. What’s the point?

What’s the point of any of it, really? If he doesn’t like this planet, maybe he should just... go. Even if he never gets to the next one.

Octane - the water feels slick like racing fuel, feeding him, drawing him in, waiting for a flame to get it started. He’s still wearing his jeans and t-shirt, left his jacket on the beach. He doesn’t know how nothing freezes around here. He doesn’t know how he’s still in the water, how he hasn’t run out screaming from the cold.

He floats on his back and closes his eyes. As a kid, when he fell asleep, he would find vibrant dreams waiting for him, just behind his eyelids. He hasn’t found colours in his dreams lately. He hasn’t found any dreams at all.

His throat is clenching. His chest feels tight. It’s like a math test first period Monday morning, but he hasn’t done one of those in a while. He rolls over and casts his eyes towards Arthur, who’s staring into the fire, shadow thrown behind him like a demon waiting for its victim to blink first.

He has the urge to do something impressive.

‘Arthur,’ he thinks, ‘Look at me. Please, look at me. Love me. Like me. Anything.’

Maybe it’s desperate, but Arthur is everything - Arthur is the only person he has, the only person he talks to, the only person he loves. He does love him. Of course he loves him. What else could it be, this feeling in his stomach when he looks at him? Surely it’s butterflies.

Maybe it’s snakes.

Mick starts to swim.

He swims out further than anyone else has, as far as he’s seen. He hears laughter from the shore. He swims back, and forth, and back, and forth. He wants Arthur to look, wants him to see.

A few days ago, Mick had been lying on the couch, and Arthur had told him he’d gained some weight over the winter. That he should start working it off. Maybe this will help? He has to look good for Arthur. That’s what you do for the people you love.

He’s about to get out of the water when something in him snaps. The tightness in his chest condenses and concentrates, his throat feels like it’s shrinking. There’s not enough oxygen in the air. Something’s bonded in the wrong place. He’s breathing the poison in. As he starts to cough, the possibility that this could be a panic attack of some kind occurs to him - but surely not. He’s not worried about anything. He doesn’t feel anything at all.

He’s stumbling, trying to get out of the water. He feels exhausted, but panicked, tired and scared, like his lungs are going to fly out of his mouth.

Someone on the shore stands, rushes towards him. It’s not Arthur.

He’s tall, his hair grown out and brown, with a nervous expression as he grabs Mick’s arm.

“Ketch!” The guy calls, and Mick is too preoccupied with his throat to register what happens next. He smells smoke - what is that?

He flops down on the sand and listens as footsteps fade in, fade out, feels something shoved into his hands, raised to his mouth.

Apparently, he has asthma.

* * *

He feels better after a while, and then, abruptly, he feels worse.

Tall guy - Sam - is driving him home, telling him to stop apologising, that it’s not his fault, but Mick still feels guilty. And on top of feeling guilty, he’s mad.

Because Arthur was sitting there, relaxing on the beach, _ high out of his mind, _and Mick was fucking drowning in more ways than one.

For once, he feels justified in his anger. He could have died, and Arthur wouldn’t have cared. He fumes in silence as Sam drives down the highway, radio switched off, until breathing comes easier and he realises - why should he?

Why _ should _ Arthur care, when Mick is really just a waste of space? A waste of air - perhaps the universe is finally pulling the plug, cutting off Mick’s oxygen supply. 

“Your boyfriend is kind of a dick,” Sam says finally, flicking his indicator on.

Mick pauses. One half of him wants to agree, the other, to deny vehemently.

“I don’t know,” he ends up replying, “Maybe.”

“Did you hear what he said?” Sam asks.

“I was a bit busy,” Mick states flatly. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to hate Arthur. He doesn’t want his life to keep unravelling like this.

“He doesn’t seem to care about…” Sam trails off, “Anything.”

‘You,’ is what Mick knows the sentence is meant to finish on.

“He was high,” Mick murmurs, rationalising it away, “Can you turn left up here, please?”

“Sure,” Sam answers, and apart from a brief thank-you and goodbye, they don’t talk any further.

Later, Mick finds it ironic that his lungs hurt like hell, and he wasn’t even the one smoking pot.

And later than that, when he falls asleep, he finds total darkness waiting for him - no colours, no people, nothing at all.


	4. you're on your own

_ i’m letting go at the reservoir _

* * *

They make up.

If making up means acting like nothing happened and ignoring everything, then they make up.

If things change, if Arthur wakes up one day and leaves him, it would be bad. How bad would it be? It would be _ bad, _he answers himself every night, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Surely change is not the enemy, but he doesn’t know what change will bring, and it scares him. It scares him to death.

Mick realises, after a few days, that he never received that call from his sister. He sends her text after text, all read, all ignored, and slowly the ice starts to thaw. As winter in the north comes to an end, the emptiness he felt throughout the season begins to melt away, leaving in its place something sharper, something harsher, something raw - a sparking wire, an exposed nerve, tripping his breaker until eventually the power just-

Goes out.

It’s raining, that night, the air in Mick’s small apartment damp and cool against his skin. Mick wants to watch Breaking Bad. Arthur wants to watch Game of Thrones. They watch Game of Thrones. It’s something small, but still, it’s something, and Mick recoils at the spurt of irritation he feels at Arthur getting his way. He’s… annoyed, at somebody who’s supposed to be the most important person in his life, and for once he isn’t entirely sure he can blame it on himself.

He doesn’t know what to do with that information.

He’d managed to get Elizabeth to promise to call when she got off work, and he glances down at his watch in the middle of some absolutely awful sex scene that makes him feel physically sick. He internally curses himself for losing track of time.

Arthur’s grabbing water in the kitchen.

“Any texts on my phone?” Mick calls out to him, looking anywhere but the television screen.

There’s a pause.

“No,” Arthur replies, coming back into the room, carrying his single glass of water.

“I’ll get mine myself, will I?” Mick frowns at him.

Arthur looks shocked. 

“Well, if you’d asked…” he replies, admonishingly, and Mick feels like a two-year old being scolded.

“Sorry,” Mick says, reflexively, and he doesn’t get up, and he doesn’t think about his phone, or his sister, and he tries not to think about why Arthur seems to enjoy every bit of Game of Thrones when some leave Mick with a stone in his ribcage and a whirlpool in his stomach.

It’s later, that Mick experiences something akin to… an out of body experience, maybe. He feels time slow down, feels something happen to his- well, his soul, he supposes. It’s not even a drop, not like when you’re on a rollercoaster. More like a fracture. He… breaks.

Picking his phone up from the kitchen bench. Seeing the missed calls, the texts. One is long, begins with his name. One is very short - two words. 

‘I’m sorry.’

They’re from three hours ago. Arthur checked his phone… two hours back, at most. The numbness in his muscles and mind returns with a ferocity, Mick doesn’t even remember what happiness - genuine, carefree, happiness - feels like, he doesn’t remember anything, the date, the city, his name. He picks up his coat and walks out the front door, ignoring Arthur’s voice, or perhaps not even hearing it, really.

He feels like he’s spinning as the wind whips around him. It’s not particularly cold, but it stings, and it blows right through his bones like he’s a ghost haunting the streets of his neighbourhood. Inexplicably, the knowledge comes to him like a bolt of lightning; he is alone in the universe, and so is everybody else, he is wholly insignificant in his existence and ultimately will die as a blip on the surface of this planet before he is buried underneath it, cold, empty, and lifeless.

Business as usual, he supposes. But it isn’t, is it? This is different, now.

It’s a process - grief, that is, or at least that’s what they say. Denial; he calls her, he calls her again and again but she doesn’t pick up and he doesn’t know who else to ring in the middle of the road at 10PM in the rain, anger; his knuckles are red and raw and cracked and bleeding and they’ll be bruised the next morning but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t, bargaining; he prays. He prays for the first time in… a long time. He knows he’s a hypocrite, because he doesn’t believe in a higher power until it suits him, but he hopes whatever entity presides over life and death can make just one exception, after everything has gone wrong, after everyone has been taken from him, everyone he loves-

He realises how true that is. Everyone he loves is absent. Whether Elizabeth is alive or not she is _ absent, _and has been for some time, and he doesn’t love Arthur. He just… doesn’t. It makes Mick feel like a monster.

He has another $20 in his wallet, resting heavy in his jacket pocket. He won’t need any for a cab back.

When the taxi arrives he makes his face as blank as he can. It’s not hard. Mick wonders, again, how broken he must be as a human being if he can’t love Arthur, if he can’t enjoy sex, if he can’t even fucking shed a tear over his sister. He doesn’t know where she is, and he can’t bear to think about it. She’d told him, in her text, not to worry. Not to go looking. Maybe she’s lying broken somewhere in the desert. Maybe she’s hanging from a ceiling fan or sinking into red-tinted bath water. He hopes she’s alive. Fuck, he hopes she’s alive. And he wishes he wasn’t.

He doesn’t know what to do, but he does. He has no direction, but he knows where he’s going. Dripping wet, the driver drops him on the other side of the reservoir, and he walks.

He just walks.


	5. sinking like a stone

_ we had it all and it fell apart _

* * *

When they were kids, Michael and Elizabeth Davies seemed to have some kind of psychic link. They weren’t twins, but they were closer than most siblings, empathising in a way that relatives and teachers often deemed remarkable. Once, when Mick was nine, and Elizabeth seven (she was always so very bright for her age), he’d broken his arm on a school excursion, and was rushed to hospital. Elizabeth had broken out crying in her classroom, unable to describe why she was upset, endlessly wailing until she finally calmed down.

Their parents had said it was odd. The children had said it was magic.

Mick was old enough not to believe in magic anymore.

The memories that once felt like sunlight were now a source of indescribable pain. His parents gone, his fault. Elizabeth gone, in whichever capacity - his fault. Arthur, probably hurt by Mick’s sudden departure, his fault.

Or maybe Arthur wasn’t hurt at all. Maybe he was glad to be rid of him. Mick would be glad, too, if he was in Arthur’s place.

He never got to those last two stages of grief, Mick realises detachedly as he reaches the flat grey sand of the reservoir. Depression - well, he’s got enough of that, he supposes. Because that’s what this must be, right? If he’s really going to do this. Who wouldn’t be depressed if they were so… subhuman? He should be locked up - no, that would just mean more pain, everlasting, amaranthine.

Acceptance.

He guesses it’s about time. He wonders if this is what he’d been headed for, since his parents died, maybe earlier. Was this always how it was going to end? How close had he come to this place? How many times had he sat where he now stood, staring into the water?

He doesn’t know how this is going to work. He doesn’t know if his body will let him do this, if his animal instincts will kick in and stop him. But, he rationalises, his animal instincts don’t appear to function in other areas. Maybe they’re turned off altogether.

Mick takes off his jacket and drops it on the sand, his phone and now-empty wallet making it thud against the ground. He takes off his socks and shoes - notes that he’s been wearing them everywhere, almost unconsciously; in his home, on his couch, even if he’s supposed to be relaxing with his boyfriend. He’s only been taking them off when he’s completely alone. He’s always ready to run. Why is that?

He’s up to his knees when he realises he’s been walking into the water. It’s freezing. He dives.

* * *

It’s frustrating. He can get under, he can keep himself there for a while, but he can’t _ stay _ there. He keeps coming back up. And coming back up. His chest is winding in on itself. His throat is tight, and his eyes are burning. He forces himself under the water again, determined that _ this is it, _that this is what he deserves, that this is the only way to see his sister and his parents again.

Darkness greets him under the water, bubbles rushing past his ears. Mick tries to breathe every last molecule of air out of his lungs, so he can sink to the bottom of this reservoir and never, ever come back up.

“Michael.”

He jerks out of the water and stands completely still, rigid with fear, before he steels himself to turn around. There is nobody there. There is nobody in the water but him.

That was the voice of his mother, though - he’s sure. He’s never been more sure of anything in his life.

And he’s not so sure about the water any more.

He stares out across it, eyes readjusting to the dark, full-body shivers tracing his spine; his arms, his fingers shaking like leaves. What is he doing here? In the reservoir, in his job, in his crappy apartment, in this city? Why is he stuck here, stuck inside his own head?

“You care too much,” his mother had told him, years ago. He closes his eyes and lets the memory warm his frozen skin. 

“What’s wrong with caring?” He’d asked, offended.

“Nothing!” She’d laughed, “Nothing at all, dear. I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”

Days passed before he picked the conversation up again.

“Why did you say you were worried?”

She stilled in her task of washing the dishes, and sighed.

“You’re a good person, Michael,” She only called him that when she was sad, “And you feel things… very deeply, very personally.”

She was right - he’d always cried when Elizabeth killed spiders.

“I’ve met people like you, when they’re older,” His mother was a psychiatrist. “To help them cope, they tend to turn it all off.”

“What do you mean?” He’d asked.

“Sometimes, when people feel too much, their brain decides it’s easier for them not to feel anything at all.”

“That sounds horrible,” he had replied.

And it was, wasn’t it?

* * *

He knows, now, somehow, deep in his bones, that Elizabeth is alive. He can feel her, the rise of her chest, the line of her throat expanding and contracting with each breath. And even if she’s not, he has to find a way to live with that. He’s not going to take the other option. He’s got things he wants to do. For the first time since he left the apartment, he lets his thoughts turn - really turn - to Arthur.

Mick knows, with a neural jolt running through his whole body, that he’s angry. He’s angry with Arthur and he has every right to be, because Arthur lied. Everything before, everything leading up to that, Mick could explain it away as something silly, something that was his fault, really. But not this. This is something that was wrong, and that fact is inescapable, for either of them.

There’s a voice in the back of his head, quieter than before, that says Arthur couldn’t have known what those texts were. That his phone might have been acting up. That Mick left Arthur all alone, and that Arthur was probably confused. 

Mick squashes that voice with something fiery and harsh, a feeling that consumes his numb nerves, lights them up like a city from space. Christ, it’s good to _ feel _something again, even if it’s violent.

He remembers, as he wades back to the beach, water trickling into his eyes and mouth, his father. He remembers the spark in that man’s eyes when someone mentioned his brother-in-law, Mick’s uncle. Mick hadn’t understood the connotations, at the time, hadn’t comprehended why his father would be talking of an abuse of power if his uncle never hurt his aunt, never hit her, never left bruises.

He thinks he gets it now. There are injuries that don’t leave marks.

His mind drifts back weeks, months, running his synapses over the jagged ridges of memories, reaching a particularly raw spot in his psyche.

“I can’t understand why you’re so obsessed with your sister,” Ketch had said, “There’s nothing _ untoward _going on, is there?”

What a sick thing to suggest, if he’d really meant what Mick had thought he did.

“You know she doesn’t care about you,” Arthur had murmured, “Not like I do.”

“Say it,” Ketch had demanded.

“Not like you do,” Mick had gritted his teeth as Arthur gripped his shoulder harder, holding back tears that threatened to spill over. At the time, he’d believed it.

He doesn’t anymore.

* * *

He’s sitting on the grey sand, shivering and dripping even though the rain has long since stopped. There’s a call from a number he didn’t think he’d ever see again.

She says his name, softly, painfully. He calls her an ambulance. He’ll cop the fees. He doesn’t care. He looks up.

The clouds have been blown away by the wind, the clear, starry sky above bearing down on him like a flood. Mick starts to cry. He thinks maybe he’ll go to college. He thinks that first he should get a cab away from this dreary waterside hell.

He realises that he spent the only money in his wallet on the taxi here, and as abruptly as he began to cry, he starts to laugh. It’s ridiculous. It’s all so ridiculous. He feels like an idiot, and yet, for some reason, there’s a feeling of pride in his chest when he dials Sam Winchester’s number.

“Mick, what the-”

He starts to explain. Sam swears a lot and apparently gets his brother out of bed and bundles him into the car, telling Mick that they’ll be there as soon as they can.

There are decent people on the planet, it seems, and the previous realisation of insignificance pales as he discovers that it’s _ okay. _ He doesn’t matter. Do any of us? He’s free to do whatever he likes, destiny be damned. He climbs into Sam’s car - Sam’s _ brother’s, _he’s told - an Impala, and finally leaves the reservoir behind.

* * *

_ i’m letting go _

_ and i will stay afloat. _

**Author's Note:**

> if you like this fic, come check me out [on tumblr!](https://dep-op-ex-pression.tumblr.com/)


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